An online resource for exploring the history of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Commercial Department

A “Business Department” was among the founding departments at State Normal. This department is described in the institution’s first course catalog: “The business or commercial course, embracing such subjects as Stenography, Typewriting, Telegraphy, and Book-Keeping, is intended especially for those women who are thrown upon their own resources, but who do not care to teach.” By the second catalog, the name of the department has changed to the “Commercial Department.”

Commercial Department shorthand class, 1902

The course of study in the Commercial Department was intended to be completed within a single academic year, although some students who did not have the required prerequisite coursework from high school were required to take additional preparatory classes prior to beginning the program. Advanced courses were offered for those wishing to take classes after that first year.

In response to increased demand for trained office workers in national defense during World War II, in February 1942, the Woman’s College enrolled its first Commercial Department students to begin their studies in the middle of the school year. Previously all students enrolled in the one-year program began their studies at the same time at the beginning the academic year. Forty-three women from across North Carolina enrolled for this “emergency commercial class.”

Commercial students training in the “machines lab,” 1957

For its first 37 years, the Commercial Department was led by E.J. Forney (who also served as the college’s treasurer). Forney ensured that the coursework offered reflected the most recent technological innovations available for office work at the time. Training in new styles of shorthand and on the use of new machines meant that graduates of the Commercial Department were in high demand in the clerical labor market.

Separate from the Commercial Department, the college began a four-year degree program in Secretarial Administration in 1932. This new program included the same liberal arts foundation that was common to all of the college’s majors, and culminated in a bachelor of science degree. Outside consultants urged in 1954 that the Commercial and Secretarial Administration programs be merged, but ultimately the college decided, for the time, to maintain the separate one-year and four-year programs.

In the 1960s, however, enrollment in the Commercial Department declaimed sharply as lower-cost community colleges, technical institutes, and private business colleges began to attract the women looking for a one-year degree program. In 1967, faced with an enrollment of only 111 students, UNCG decided to terminate the Commercial Department and the one-year commercial program.